WHY?

There are people I know that educate their children through the philosophy of unschooling. I know little of this philosophy except that at the fundamentals of it is the belief that humans naturally want to learn and that put in an educationally rich environment children will learn. My point in mentioning this is that I have done that in my house(until they are school age) and have seen it play out in three very different ways. With Declan, Husband and I put forth very little effort in teaching him colors and numbers and such as we had little time with Killi arriving when he was 15 months old and Maggie when he was 3 1/2. That is not to say that we didn't read to him or play with him, but we were not very hung up on a time table for his learning, and despite our involvement, and due to the fact that I was very strict about what he watched on TV and he loved Thomas trains, he learned all of his colors and numbers on his own. Now with Maggie, the littlest monster, I have been far less strict with what is on TV, but I do have had more time to spend with her as the others she will follow me around with a book until I agree to stop moving and read it(she has gone so far as to follow me to the restroom:) She would be happy if I would play letter and number games and read to her all day long, and because of this, she too has learned all those know-before-kindergarten things. Killi, who I have offered the same learning experiences to such as reading, game playing, educational shows will do none of them. For her, having to sit through a story is as bad as time-out, playing letter games is as fun as being hit by her sister.

The point of this rambling post is to ask this, Do all humans strive to learn or only those that can learn in a traditional way? And at what point, if you are an unschooler do you need to point your children in a direction to learn things that they need to succeed in life? And why oh why does my Killi not want to do all the "normal" kid things? Why will she not let me read her bedtime stories?



*Please note that this blog is in no way a judgment on unschoolers, I wish I had the skills and patients to do it.